


If You Must Leave

by mimimini



Category: Keyakizaka46 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Akatsuki no Yona, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, F/F, Non-Linear Narrative, set in the white dragon's village
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 21:25:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18269600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimimini/pseuds/mimimini
Summary: The story of one of the reincarnations of the White Dragon who lived before they could serve again their king.





	If You Must Leave

**Author's Note:**

> title from keaton henson's you.

When the next White Dragon was born, Miyu lost all her hope to see Yurina again.

Oddly, the people in the village weren’t so quick to give up on her. “She’ll be travelling back home,” the Elders said, looking serene. Miyu wasn’t so sure of that. It has been almost five years since Yurina had left, and there wasn’t a day where Miyu didn’t remember her as she disappeared down the side of the mountain, a white dot burned into Miyu’s eyes.

 

***

 

Miyu didn’t remember much of her early childhood, but all the memories she had of it were tied to Yurina. Back then, the old White Dragon was still alive, his powers slowly draining from him as they found their new home in Yurina’s hand. Miyu, like all the other kids, was fascinated with it, how it slowly but steadily changed shape, became something different, _powerful_.

She doesn’t remember the old dragon’s face, but she remembers the stories the adults whispered among themselves, as if the kids couldn’t understand, in that silly, forgetful way adults have of underestimating how much children their age can be aware of the things around them. The old dragon was dying, that much everyone knew, but what the adults talked of with pity was his sadness, eating him away.

“Sadness for what?”, Miyu had asked Yurina one evening, when they were the last two kids left playing in the patch of grass behind the councilroom. They weren’t alone, Yurina never was, with an adult always hovering to make sure she was safe, but that day the guard was keeping an eye on them from afar, and they were able to talk freely, as they kicked a ball back and forth between them.

Yurina hadn’t replied, but the smile on her face had dimmed, and Miyu realised it was the wrong question to ask, even if she didn’t really understand why.

Years later, as she watched Yurina growing restless, scared of not being needed by the Red Dragon in her era, she remembered that late afternoon with painful clarity.

 

***

 

Miyu hadn’t put much hope into those promised regular reports from the agents outside, and she was proven right pretty soon. One of the first reports after Yurina left was brought by one of the guards who had been sent by the Elders to protect the White Dragon from the shadows. Yurina had somehow sensed she was being followed and had managed to vanish under the guards’ noses.

For someone brought up protected and revered like Yurina was, she had an exceptional sense for sneaking, the elders had to admit, to their chagrin. Miyu, in the councilroom to assist her grandmother as the report was shared, had to stop herself from giggling despite herself.

She remembered all the nights where they sneaked out of their homes while their parents and, in Yurina’s case, the guards thought they were sleeping, Yurina dragging her to wherever she wanted, first when they were just kids, and then as they grew up, became girls, young women.

Every time Yurina touched her, Miyu felt a shiver running up her arms, even if it was just Yurina’s sweaty palm around her wrist.

 

***

 

“I want to go look for the Red Dragon,” Yurina said, one night, as they were hiding on the branches of the tallest tree in the village. Under them, there was complete silence, the roofs of the houses illuminated by the full moon.

“You’ve been saying that a lot these days,” Miyu muttered, plucking at the bark on the branch she was sitting on.

“I’m serious. I’m going to leave the village soon. I got the permission from the Elders already, during a secret session.”

“You’re leaving?” Miyu’s hands stopped for a second, a sudden feeling of vertigo washing over her body. “For real?”

“By the next moon.” Yurina sighed. Miyu knew Yurina was looking at her from her branch behind her, but she couldn’t find it in herself to turn and look at her. “Alone.”

 

Yurina would have left the village one day, Miyu had felt it ever since they were kids--it wasn’t a matter of _if_ , but of _when_ , maybe with the permission of the council, maybe without it, hiding in the shadows as the guards made their rounds around the village’s natural fortifications.

It was silly, but somewhere deep inside Miyu had always hoped that wherever she went, Yurina would have brought her along. Miyu had always been her right hand--very ironically--so she had convinced herself that she would be next to her even then.

Clearly, she was wrong.

 

That was the last time they sneaked out at night. Yurina started avoiding her right after that night.

 

***

 

The kid was growing, his hand getting more and more like Yurina’s, and Miyu hated herself for feeling bitter at the sight. She wondered where Yurina was, if someone was helping her as she weakened. As long as the hand didn’t become fully formed, it meant she was still alive, but the day all of the dragon’s powers would be absorbed by the new one seemed to be approaching faster by the minute. Was she in danger? Had she found some kind of peace in the world outside?

 

“The Elders want you to teach the young White Dragon how to use a bow, when he is of the apt age,” her grandmother told her one evening, when she went to help her with her food. Her grandmother, one of the village Elders, lived in one corner of the village, alone, and while she was able to take care of herself, her parents and her nephews took turns to prepare her food and do the heavy labour for her.

Miyu took a sharp breath, but the news didn’t come unexpected. She was the best archer in the village. Even Yurina couldn’t compete with her.

“I see,” she said, because her grandmother was waiting for some kind of response. “It’s not like I can refuse, can I?”

“You’re right, you can’t,” her grandmother replied, a tinge of coldness in her expression. After a second, however, she softened. “I know what you’re going through now,” she said, as if taming a scared animal, “but it’ll take years before you have to start tutoring him.” _Your pain will have dulled by then_ , her words implied, but Miyu found it difficult to believe her.

 

***

 

The weeks before Yurina’s departure were chaotic. When it was announced to the rest of the village, there were many villagers who cried for hours. Some had even begged to be able to go with her, to help her in the outside world, but the Elders had been adamant on that one point--no one was to go with her.

That didn’t stop Miyu from trying to convince her grandmother to have her appointed as one of the guards. Miyu knew that there were going to be some who would have to follow her and make sure she wouldn’t get in trouble.

Her grandmother shot her down without hesitating.

“They’re all agents who are already outside the village, people who know how things work outside,” she told Miyu. “And don’t forget you’re the one who will take our family’s place in the council after my time, and your mother’s after that, will come.”

Miyu knew her duties perfectly well. She did. However. “Wouldn’t it be a honour for our family if I went with her to serve the White Dragon?”

“Why should such a privilege be granted to our family alone?”

“Then have all the families select someone to be part of her following.”

“Not every family can give up heirs to follow her outside, and if one can’t, then nobody can,” her grandmother spit out, “not to mention that the White Dragon can’t be too conspicuous. A following as big as the number of all the families of the village would be out of the question.”

 

***

 

The dragon’s hand was almost fully formed and the boy was about to turn four when the Elders finally started realising that Yurina wouldn’t be coming back to the village.

It was a gradual worry that spread among the villagers, and Miyu looked as everyone slowly grew resigned, spending their evenings praying that Yurina wasn’t in danger and was spending the days before her inevitable end peacefully.

The Elders had various sessions of council, but they were completely powerless. After Yurina had vanished, all their attempts to find her again had failed miserably.

“We shouldn’t have let her outside at all,” one Elder said during one of the first council sessions.

“We shouldn’t have let her go on her own,” another one said, from the opposite side of the councilroom, but all these discussions were empty, because there wasn’t a way to undo those mistakes. The trail was too cold by now, it had been for years. Miyu, sitting beside her grandmother, kept her eyes down so she wouldn’t be sending pointed looks at everyone.

More than anything now, Miyu regretted not leaving the village and going to look for her when it looked like there was still time, when the next Dragon was still a newborn baby. It was completely useless now, but she wondered from time to time if Yurina would have been happy to see her, had she eventually found her.

 

***

 

“Your grandmother has been introducing all the guys in the village to you, as if you didn’t grow up with them,” Miyu said with a chuckle.

They were sitting on one of the low branches of one of the trees right at the end of the village, side to side.

“She says I can do whatever I want, but she still hopes to get some grandchildren.”

“And what do you want to do?” Miyu asked, but she knew her reply, she knew it by how their hands were interlaced between them, by how Yurina’s touches always lingered longer than necessary.

Yurina laughed, her voice a bit too loud for that time of the night, but in that instant, Miyu didn’t care if the guards found them and they got scolded for roaming around at night.

 

***

 

Her grandmother’s health suddenly worsened when the boy turned four, the hand’s shape still a little off but its strength now unmistakable.

Miyu often had to look after her, now bedridden, as her mother stepped in as their family’s Elder. They usually just sat in silence, her grandmother sleeping or, when she felt strong enough, sitting in her bed, her back propped against the wall, and Miyu doing all those little activities she could do without moving, like mending, preparing the points for the arrows the White Dragon would have to use one day under her supervision, carving some playthings in the wood for him.

There was no meaning in hating a child.

 

One day, after a fretful night of sleep, her grandmother called on her.

Her cousin, who had spent the night taking care of her, gave Miyu a meaningful look before going back to his family.

When Miyu sat next to her bed, her grandmother slowly held out her hand, and Miyu took it between hers.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” her grandmother started speaking. “I should have let you go. I should have begged the council to accept her proposal… I should have told you...”

“I know, grandmother,” Miyu said, delicately squeezing that old, frail hand.

Her grandmother spoke slowly, her words coming out muffled despite her efforts. “No, you don’t… She had asked to bring you with her… She had begged to…”

“I know,” Miyu repeated, her voice a bit stronger.

“How…?”

Miyu grimaced. “Some of the Elders aren’t that good at keeping secrets. And I guess they pitied me.”

“Then why didn’t you leave when they told you?”

Why didn’t she leave, indeed. She was scared of the outside world back then. She still was. Yurina--Yurina was of a different breed. Maybe it was the Dragon’s blood in her that pushed her towards a goal out of her reach, that had made her feel unsettled ever since she was born and too young and naive to understand it. Maybe it was something else.

Miyu didn’t have it in her, so she had let Yurina slip through her fingers--she had let Yurina push her away when Miyu didn’t tell her she would run away from the village to join her. She had left Yurina alone in the world outside as she spent the rest of her days choking in the safety of the village.

 

Three days after her grandmother’s death, the council announced that the White Dragon’s hand was fully formed.

 

***

 

“Do you want to sneak out of the village and go see the valley one of these days?” Miyu asked one night, one of the many spent hiding in the trees and in the shadows of the huts. That day was different, though--they felt bold after a very fruitful hunt on the other side of the mountain and had climbed on the roof of the village council.

Yurina looked at her, her surprise clearly written on her face. It was the day before a full moon. “Do you have a fever?”

“What are you saying,” Miyu muttered, her cheeks burning. “I’m serious.”

“You’re supposed to be the responsible one between us,” Yurina said with a chuckle.

“I can have fun from time to time,” Miyu scoffed. “So? Are you in?”

Yurina laughed, but there was a note of bitterness in her voice that Miyu couldn’t understand then. “Maybe another time. I’d go anywhere with you, if you asked.”

**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to li for proofreading this ;;


End file.
